The Song of Los
Africa
I will sing you a song of Los, the Eternal Prophet:
He sung it to four harps at the tables of Eternity.
In heart-formed Africa.
Urizen faded! Ariston shudder’d!
And thus the Song began:
ADAM stood in the garden of Eden
And Noah on the mountains of Ararat;
They saw Urizen give his Laws to the Nations
By the hands of the children of Los.
Adam shudder’d! Noah faded! Black grew the sunny African
When Rintrah gave Abstract Philosophy to Brama in the East.
(Night spoke to the Cloud:
‘Lo, these Human form’d spirits, in smiling hypocrisy Way
Against one another; so let them War on, slaves to the eternal Elements.’)
Noah shrunk beneath the wathers;
Abram fled in fires from Chaldea;
Moses beheld upon Mount Sinai forms of dark delusion.
To Trismegistur Palamabroon gave an abstract Law,
To Pythagoras, Socrates & Plato.
Time rolled on o’er all the sons of Har; time after time
Orc on Mount Atlas howl’d, chain’d down with the Chain of Jealousy.
Then Oothoon hover’d over Judah & Jerusalem,
And Jesus heard her voice (a man of sorrows); he reciev’d
A Gospel form wretched Theotormon.
The human race began to wither, for the healthy built
Secluded places, fearing the joys of Love,
And the diseased only propagated.
So Antamon call’d up Leutha from her valleys of delight
And to Mahomet a loose Bible gave.
But in the North to Odin Sotha gave a Code of War,
Because of Diralada, thinking to reclaim his joy.
These were the churches, Hospitals, Castles, Palace,
Like nets & gins & traps to catch the joys of Eternity,
And all the rest a desart;
Till like a dream Eternity was obliterated & erased,
Since that dread day when Har and Heva fled,
Because their brethren & sisters liv’d in War & Lust;
And as they fled, they shrunk
Into two narrow doleful forms,
Creeping in reptile flesh upon
The bosom of the ground,
And all the vast of Nature shrunk
Before their shrunken eyes.
[...] Read more
poem by William Blake (1795)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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